Murali Temburni
Delaware State University, DE·Neuroscience
What an animal eats can change how it behaves, and part of that influence runs through the microbes in its gut. Dietary fat is more than fuel: it reshapes which bacteria thrive in the intestine and which chemical products those bacteria release.
- Fields
Neuroscience
Microbiology & Immunology
Plant Science & Agriculture
- Topics
gut-brain axis
gut microbiome
dietary fat
- Grants
- 1 known grant, last ended Sep 2026
What they work on
- Test how the type and amount of dietary fat changes gut microbial community composition in male and female chickens across ages, using 16S rRNA sequencing and shotgun metagenomics.
- Identify the metabolites produced by intestinal microbial fermentation under different fat diets using metabolomics, and track candidate compounds from gut to blood to brain to find those that cross the blood-brain barrier.
- Determine whether diet- and microbiota-driven metabolite shifts alter the central serotonergic system in chickens, by quantifying expression of genes for behavior-modulating neurotransmitters and recording neuronal signaling by electrophysiology.
- Quantify diet-related changes in chicken behavior from video recordings analyzed with neurobehavioral software, and relate them to microbiome, metabolite and gene expression data in a systems-level analysis.
More about the research
Some of those products enter the bloodstream and can reach the brain, where they may alter the signaling molecules that govern mood, stress reactions and activity. This collaborative project uses chickens (Gallus gallus) as a vertebrate model to test how the type and amount of fat in the diet acts through gut microbes to change brain signaling — particularly the serotonin system, which shapes stress responses and behavior — and in turn observable behavior. The molecular mechanisms linking dietary fat and gut microbes to serotonin signaling have not been worked out in birds.
Why it matters
Chicken is a major food animal, and diet-driven changes in stress reactivity and behavior affect bird welfare and productivity, so the findings could inform feed formulation in poultry production. Because the gut-microbiome-brain connection is shared across vertebrates, the results may also help explain how dietary fat influences brain signaling and behavior more broadly, including in humans. The project additionally trains undergraduate and doctoral researchers at historically Black colleges and universities.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Minghua Tang
Colorado State University-Fort Collins, CO·Public Health & Epidemiology
Determine how meat-, dairy- and plant-based complementary diets affect infant growth from 5 to 12 months in a 300-infant randomized controlled feeding trial with longitudinal growth and body composition measures.
Santiago Cuesta
Rutgers University-New Brunswick, NJ·Neuroscience·Early-career
Identify how psychostimulant exposure changes gut microbial composition and the gut's chemical environment, using metagenomics to profile microbial DNA and metabolomics to measure small molecules.
Sharon Bewick
Clemson University, SC·Ecology & Evolution
Test whether genetically identical parthenogenetic whiptail lizards (Aspidoscelis) show less individual-to-individual variation in gut and skin microbiota than their sexually reproducing, genetically diverse parent species, using 16S rRNA gene sequencing.
The school
Delaware State University: 2 labs on PI Pages, $44M a year on research, 42 research doctorates a year.
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